Neuroscience Center Comes Into Focus

There will not be one huge tower but rather two buildings, neither more than eight stories, so as not to overwhelm the residential neighborhood. One will be cantilevered over the current surgery center and the other beside it but set back from the street and buffered with landscaping.

Those details about Yale New Haven Hospital’s $838 million planned neuroscience center — the the biggest health project ever undertaken in the state — emerged in an update by hospital officials at Tuesday night’s regular meeting of the Dwight Central Management Team.

Two dozen people gathered in the community room of the Amistad School to hear hospital Senior Vice President for Community and Public Affairs Vin Petrini and his staff show renderings of the reconfigured campus, its research center and new ​“bed towers.” (Click here for a story with more details of the plan.)

Petrini said the plans for the transformation of the site at the southwestern edge of the hospital’s St. Raphael campus will be filed this month to begin the process of review and approval by city agencies and the Board of Alders. If all goes well, ceremonial shovels will go into the ground in the spring, with an opening date in 2024. Those approval processes will afford ample time for public comment and input, Petrini noted.

The plans, which which were the subject of meetings in meetings among Yale-New Haven Hospital CEO Marna Borgstrom, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, and Mayor Toni Harp before their announcement, received a generally positive response at Tuesday night’s meeting.

The project’s chief feature, said Petrini, is that the hospital will build on the St. Raphael campus’s existing envelope and not ​“move into the neighborhood.”

When Yale consolidated all of its cancer care programs at the Smilow Cancer Center, that building rose to 16 stories. More appropriate in the residential West River neighborhood, the two planned buildings will be mini towers of no higher than eight stories, with linking vestibule, and lots of setback and greenery.

In a 40-minute question-and-answer session after the presentation, some management team attendees previewed concerns common to these projects: preservation of old structures, parking, and anxiety about community benefits. Will local people get the jobs?

“I’m very concerned with streetscape along Sherman,” said longtime preservationist Olivia Martson. ​“What’s to be demolished?”

Petrini answered: Three hospital-owned buildings will be demolished: a small convent, a pastoral care building, and a child care building. Martson asked if they, or at least the religious building or the larger brick building might be spared. ​“I’d love to see some buildings [on Sherman] between Chapel and George preserved,” she said.

Martson was at pains to praise the community benefits and the economic development coming through the project. Still she insisted the three small buildings slated to disappear are part of the Dwight historic texture.

Petrini said that the new buildings’ modest scale and the green spaces planned, including on the roof, will preserve a neighborhood character. He reiterated a commitment Yale New Haven made when it took over St. Raphael’s, which was“to maintain religious iconography.” He offered the group opportunity to go into the convent building and salvage religious objects.

However, the buildings themselves cannot be salvaged without upending the general plans he said.

Martson said she’ll be there to press her ideas at the formal hearings later this year and next.

Then there was, as always, parking. The plans call for an expansion of garage space at the hospital’s lot on Orchard Street. Questioners asked if more parking os necessary. It causes pollution and is not good for your health, and hospitals are supposed to be all about health, some said.

Petrini emphasized a balancing act, which the plans represent, remaining cognizant of the neighborhood needs but also those of the hospital. ​“People have to be able to come in and out,” he said.

He said an extensive traffic study, already complete, will be part of the hospital’s submission to the city for plan approval.

He was also receptive to another questioner’s observation that along Orchard Street, between Chapel and George, about ​“a constant stream of staff who don’t cross at the light.”

“We could use a crosswalk,” the questioner concluded.

“Okay,” Petrini replied.

As the session wound to a halt, anxiety about the community benefits, particularly, jobs, emerged.

“It’s always a sore point,” said Dottie Green, ​“but it’s important that [jobs] not be just low end. We hope the community people will be able to part of that. I’m really concerned that an effort be made so that [local people] can get the training necessary, in advance, to be eligible for the better-paying positions.”

“We’ll figure out what they need,” said Tyisha Walker Myers, ​“and we’ll make sure everyone in the neighborhood knows.”

There was talk of providing a list of all the positions — once they are known — and circulating it, and getting people prepared to apply. New Haven Works will be involved. ​“I’m at the table,” Walker Myers added.